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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 623, 21 February 1879, Page 2

Catlin, the celebrated North American Indian traveller, relates how punishment is inflicted on any member of a tribe who has been found guilty of theft, murder, or adultery. The prisoner is secured to the trunk of a tree ; his arms and legs are bound m a way m which it is impossible for him to release them. Then he is put to the torture. First, one of the tribe cuts a gash m his flesh ; this is followed by others doing the same, no mortal part being touched. After three hours of protracted torture, the miserable wretch receives his final coup by the chief of the tribe, who sends a spear through his breast, when he is out of his agony for ever. We suppose this kind of brutal punishment can only come from an uncivilised and barbarous people. Let us imagine how a future historian will write of the punishment of a criminal as inflicted by Ministers of New Zealand, such as are living at the present day. In those times, says the historian ; if a man was charged with having committed a murder, he was tried by a learned judge and a jury of his countrymen. If he was found guilty, he was sentenced to be strangled with a rope by suspension from a scaffold, known m those times as a gallows. Before sentence was carried into execution, the chief of the Ministry would allow the guilty culprit to entertain a hope that his sentence would be commuted to a less severe punishment. There would be no definite promise made one way or other, so that the guilty man was allowed for many weeks to remain m an agony of uncertainty. During this time Ministers would be taking their pleasuring m many parts of the country. One would be at his island home, surrounded by all the graces and refinements of life. Here he would be found fondling a child, and supplying it with delicious sweetmeats. He would talk touchingly upon the innocence of childhood ; but all tbis time has the condemned prisoner remained still m the agony of uncertainty. He could not ask of his Heavenly Father that his great sin would be forgiven him ; for his mind was on a rack. He could not eat, nor sleep, nor pray, with his thoughts mingling with his distractions. He would be constantly asking his gaoler whether his sentence had arrived ; whether he was to be hung or imprisoned for life, working long years m fetters ; but the gaoler could give no answer. He would hope to comfort the prisoner, by saying the chief of the Ministers was a very humane man, who was very fond of giving sugar candy and other sweets to children ; and so the wretch still continued on m the agony of uncertainty, until Ministers should meet to consider his doom. But one Minister was away m Maoriland, enjoying Maori life, such as it is. Another was resting m the bosom of his family. Another was addressing his constituents. A fourth busy m framing an amended Land Tax Bill. Still the man, for many long weary weeks, lived on m the agony of uncertainty. " Is there no word, no message, no Ik pc held out ? Better that I had died weeks-ago, than live such nights and days a& I go through. " But the gaoler could only offer the same cold comfort : — The chief of the Ministers is so good to children ; so fond of them, and is never without his pockets full of sugar candy. At last Ministers meet. They have come from their pleasuring trips, from north and south and the east and west of the two islands. They salute, and chat, and discourse of the weather ; and of the down-trodden working-man, and of taking another half-penny off the duty on tea, when it is just remembered there is a criminal awaiting their merciful consideration. Then it is they direct that the criminal shall be hanged to a rope until he his dead. The only mercy that has been shown to the condemned man, is, by the executioner, who, directly the drop has fallen, jumps up and adds the weight of his body to the strangled criminal, and so breaking his neck, causes almost instant death. Then the historian draws a comparison between the barbarous mode pursued by the savages of the American Indian tribes, and the refined cruelties of the European chiefs of the two Islands of New Zealand, and cites the case of Walsh m confirmation of the truth of his statement. ,

The Rev. G. F. Cross, a minister m orders, of the Church of England, m Victoria, lias written an admirable article m the Melbourne Revieiv, under the title of "The Modern Pulpit." In a few terse, well-expressed words, the rev. writer says the Pulpit ought to influence the thought and conduct of the people for good, but that it does not do this. That, as an agency, acting on the conduct and character of society, it is virtually impotent and sterile. That the clergy are not only separated by a gulf ' ' from the great intellectual brotherhood of the day ; but they are even excluded from a confidential participation m the secret religious interests" of their people. "Lastly," says Mr. Cross, " It is the fault of ministers that it is so." Mr. Cross does not mince matters m the least. He strikes clean out from the the shoulder, but never hits below the belt. The case is that the influence of the pulpit is a dwindling one ; that the share of the clergy m the mental and spiritual life of man is rapidly disappearing, and that it is so is due to their own sloth, or want of courage, or neglect. This is a serious accusation, and the fact that it is made by a clergyman who deeply feels the humiliation he avows, is, at any rate, guarantee of the feeling of responsibility with which the charge is preferred. One simrce of this want of influence is declared by Mr. Cross to be the ignorance shown by the clergy of the needs and difficulties of the age. They are s'ruit up m their traditions, and do not note " the growth of new and mighty forces "outside of them." He proceeds m these words : — " No more striking illustration of this fact can be found than by comparing the philosophic and scientific articles m the great secular reviews with the ordinary clerical correspondence m the religious papers. Trifles of ritual and hairsplittings of dogma are discussed with such energy and interest as indicates that they are considered as of the last importance, while all around us the very foundations of everything are heaving under our feet, and the thoughtful and educated of our lay brethren throughout the civilised world are pondering over vast and vital questions, which affect the most sacred interests of the human race. We content ourselves Avith branding * modern thought ' with atheism and rationalism, but it would be better if we would enlarge the borders of our reading and our observation, and look into those matters and find out for ourselves what they all mean." Proceeding to the consideration of the ultimate spring of the impotence of the pulpit, Mr. Cross, after tracing this to the ignorance of the clergy of the questions which occupy the thoughts and feelings of intelligent men, asks how it is that they are thus ignorant 1 Why do they neglect to master theories and doctrines which they are so ready to denounce with all the heated fervour of theologic oratory 1 His answer is that they are afraid. ' l We are afraid of disturbing and undermining our own religious faith and peace, and we are afraid of incurring the suspicion and the displeasure of those powers, lay and clerical, which unite to exercise, not only authority, but almost a kind of terrorism, over us." If it is indeed true, writes the Editor of the Australasian that clergymen are expected hy their superiors, and by each other, and the public opinion of their communion to go on thundering with orthodox artillery against Darwin and Tyndall, while it is considered discreditable for them to study the doctrines they thus loudly censure. Then the pulpit has indeed become a shame and a mockery, and the question as to its decline of influence is sufficiently answered. That clergymen, as a rule, know very little of the theories to which they attach such terrible consequences has been more than suspected by all competent to form a judgment. The punishment is that, as they refuse to welcome the new science till hostility is utterly useless, tliey are always a generation behind the van ; they are always attempting to nourish their intellectual nature on the withered and discarded husks of science, now superseded by a later harvest ; and as a consequence, find themselves servered by an impassable gulf from the intellectual life of their age, from which they derive little stimulus of support, and to which they contribute very little assistance.